Why Is It So Hard to Write an Academic Paper For Publishing? When you are writing your first or second academic paper, the journey to publishing feels complex and overwhelming. Where do you get started with writing? The technicalities of publishing (choosing a journal, adhering to their guidelines, writing a rebuttal letter) are actually the […]
Writing and Publishing
Why Writing a Dissertation is About Showing Up, No Matter What
Why is Writing a Dissertation So Scary? When Aileen, a Chemistry PhD student, started graduate school, she didn’t think that writing a Dissertation would be a challenge. She passed her PhD candidacy exam with perfect grades and had a great relationship with her PhD thesis supervisor. Fast forward several years… As Aileen was beginning her […]
Writing a PhD Thesis in Half the Time When You Don’t Know Where to Start
Does Writing a PhD Thesis Have to Be Painful? “Writing a thesis is probably so stressful,” said the kind doctor at the emergency room, as he examined my elbows throbbing with pain. “You may be able to avoid surgery because you are young”, I heard him say, “but if I were you I would strongly […]
How to finish your literature review when you can’t stop reading articles
The Literature Review Dilemma: Read or Write? “You should read at least 200 articles for this literature review,” my professor said when he gave us an assignment to prepare us for writing our Dissertation. I was a first year graduate student, and I took his advice too literally. I typed in the keywords into the search […]
How to Finish Your Thesis a Few Minutes at a Time
Sometimes A Few Minutes is All You Have to Finish Your Thesis and (Finally) Get Your PhD Is it possible to finish your thesis a few minutes at a time? It was certainly not something I had planned. I had envisioned sitting in front of the computer for many hours typing incessantly until my thesis was […]
7 Rules You Must Violate to Finish Writing Your Thesis
Why I Had to Unlearn Everything From the 7th Grade to Finish Writing My Thesis Writing my thesis challenged everything I had learned about proper English writing. My first real writing assignment in 7th grade was to write a report about my favorite book that I read during the summer. Our teacher, Ms. P, was […]